


To Calm Her Frantic Thoughts

by elle_stone



Series: Tumblr Requests [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, post 2x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 15:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: It was a mistake to enter the Camp Jaha gate, just because Bellamy asked her to. She should have left right away. She should have known that if she didn't turn away at once, she'd lose her nerve.





	To Calm Her Frantic Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "I can't stand the thought of losing you" requested by anonymous on tumblr.

To calm her frantic thoughts, Clarke narrows her focus down to a few simple sensations, and forces them to become her whole world.

She thinks about how:

Bellamy’s skin is soft and warm.

The hard jut of his ribs somehow coexists with the fragile hollow of his stomach.

His heartbeat is steady and so is the soothing way his lungs fill with air and then deflate again as he breathes.

His hand is in her hair, slowly carding through it, easing out the tangles his fingers find.

Her hand is splayed against his side, her skin a gentle contrast against his skin. Her fingers look different than she remembered. They are darker, tanner, calloused now, more worn. Somehow it's as if she knew the gentle slope of his torso better than her own hands. He looks pure and perfect and whole. She feels bloodied and dirt streaked, broken.

They are lying on a mattress that is old and sunken, but since she is mostly lying on him, she is more aware of the topography of his bones and tendons and muscles than anything else. If she concentrates hard enough, she feels nothing but him.

She hears nothing but him, his heartbeat, the secret rumblings of his insides.

His other hand is resting lightly on her arm.

She closes her eyes and dares to let herself think, _yes, this is working_. A feeling of calm settles over her, for a few moments, at least.

And yet a few shining truths, hard and bright there at the edge of her thoughts, still intrude. She flutters her eyelids open again, and stares at the muscles in Bellamy's arm, stares and stares until they turn into mountains, mountains rising up over the valley that is her old, gray sheets.

The truth is that she has made a mistake. Or a series of mistakes. Each mistake a new sharp truth to needle her.

It was a mistake to enter the Camp Jaha gate, just because Bellamy asked her to. She should have left right away. She should have known that if she didn't turn away at once, she'd lose her nerve.

It was a mistake, too, to sit down outside at the rickety old table, salvaged from scrap, and share a drink with him. They clinked their tin cups together first. Then tilted back their heads, both at once, and drank, both at once, and set the empty cups down on the table again, both at once. She still remembers the burn of moonshine fire down her throat.

It was a mistake to let herself yawn, because then the thought of her bed seemed too tempting. And she'd brought Bellamy with her, because she knew these might be the last moments she'd ever spend with him and she needed just one more. And one more after that. They went to her old quarters because this is Alpha Station, and she has old quarters, and his old room is smashed to pieces on the rocks.

But the biggest error in her judgment was when she decided, very simply and cleanly as she stared at him, her hands gripping his arms, his fingers pushing back a strand of her hair behind one ear, that she should kiss him. Because she knew even before he kissed back that one kiss would not be one kiss, but infinite kisses, his hands under her shirt, her fingers at the button on his fly, their shoes kicked off to bang against the closed, locked bedroom door. She knew. She knew, in some way, when she first agreed to come in for just one drink, that she'd started on a path that could bring her nowhere else but here.

Staring at his bicep, feeling his fingers twirling round a strand of her hair.

"Are you okay?" Bellamy's voice is little more than a murmur, something she _feels_ rumbling through her more than she hears. It feels like she thinks an earthquake might feel. It makes something in her chest clench up.

"I could be asking you the same thing."

He lets out a long breath, and she feels his whole chest fall beneath her, a sea change that makes her want to hold on that much more tightly to him.

"I'm not the one who wants to run off into the forest by myself," he reminds her.

So, she thinks, this is something they are going to talk about. But she doesn't know what to say—to his question, the only real answer is _of course I'm not okay_ —so she's silent.

Eventually, tentatively, he asks, "Are you still going to...?"

She wants to say _I don't know_ , but those words won't come except as tears, trying to choke her. Instead she shrugs. "I need to. I can't—if I leave this room to do anything else, I don't think I could stand it. Looking at them. Seeing them again."

She shouldn't be talking because her words sound wet and rocky, like the shoreline of the ocean she'll never see. ( _Maybe that's where I will go. To the shore. Finally to the shore._ ) Bellamy's fingers slide from her hair down to her shoulder, and his arm squeezes around her a bit tighter. She thinks she feels him press a kiss to the top of her head.

He'll say something now, any minute now, something that will make it impossible for her to leave, and just to stop those words from coming, she blurts out, "I wish we hadn't. I wish we hadn't done this."

Something in his body stiffens, but he doesn't let go. Doesn't speak either, except to say, "All right."

"Not because—" She blinks a few times, fast; her thoughts are crowding up again, bottlenecking right where abstracts become concrete, where fleeting fears turn into confessions. She kisses his ribs and his sides. She slides down in his arms and presses patterns of kisses against his hip. It's possible she's crying but she doesn't want to know. "I can't stand the thought of losing you, Bellamy. I could barely stand it before. If I'd just walked away, it would have been hard, but I could have done it. I'm not sure anymore that I can."

She's all but slipped out of his grasp, but he wraps his arms around her again, pulls her up so that they're crushed together, chest to chest, and he's hugging her close, her nose squashed up against the hollow of his neck.

"Then don't," he whispers. "Don't go."

This is the sound of a man who never begs, begging. It's awful and painful and something in her rebels at it, and at herself, for bringing him to this.

“How am I supposed to stay?”

She can’t stay; she can’t go. It’s all impossible. If she weren’t in Bellamy’s arms, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“Stay,” he murmurs, his voice in her ear, “because here you’re not alone. Stay because you’ll have me. Stay because I can’t stand the thought of being without you either.”

She’s not sure it’s enough. She almost can’t believe it’s enough. But she knows that for a few more moments, at least, she doesn’t want him to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/), where I reblog stuff, talk about writing, and take fic requests.


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